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very bad definitions iMO

Your characterizations of subjectivist/objectivist are rather broad, but I would throw out labels such as these anyway.

You talk about person to person variation. These obviously exist. As an example, consider testing for hearing sensitivity at 20 kHz. If you use a sample of people over 50, you will get about zero percent who can hear a pure tone at 20 kHz. If you then generalize this to the human population in general, you have made an error. This is a poorly designed experiment to answer that question.

But what about experimental procedure itself? Suppose you signal each one of these over 50s when you are playing the tone and then ask them "do you hear anything?" Alternatively, suppose you play tones at random intervals without telling them and ask them to signal when they hear something.

If you've ever visited an audiologist, you know which procedure is used, and I'm sure you understand why.

Everyone, without exception, is influenced by bias, whether you call this the placebo effect or something less judgmental. Any experiment will attempt to minimize bias.

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